Strange orphan behavior in tables

[Lynne A. Price]

Andy,
   Are you asking why the second row isn't placed on the first page or why 
a 3-row table with an orphan setting of 2 breaks at all?
   If you want FM to use available space at the bottom of a page for the 
2nd row, change the orphan setting to 1.
   I have confirmed the behavior you report, that FM (I tested 7.2, 8, and 
9), will break a 3-row table after the first row even with an orphan 
setting of 2. Since, quoting from the FM 9 UG, "The orphan row property 
determines the minimum number of body rows that must be kept together on a 
page or in a column.", this behavior is indeed a bug", in either the 
documentation or the software. What FM seems to actually be doing could be 
described as "The orphan row property determines the minimum number of body 
rows that must be kept together after a page break or column break."

         --Lynne

At 04:06 PM 6/26/2009, Andy Kass wrote:
>Hi everyone,
>
>I'm working in unstructured FrameMaker 8 (p277) on Windows XP, and I'm 
>noticing that tables have spacing issues at the bottom of a page when they 
>have less than twice the number of orphan rows.
>
>For example, if I have a table with 3 rows (regardless of heading rows) 
>that has an orphan setting of 2, the last 2 rows will move to the next 
>page when there isn't space for the whole table. However, if the table 
>moves down the page, or if that first row expands vertically, it jumps to 
>the next page before it fills the whitespace below it.
>
>In fact, after some testing, it appear that the whitespace below the first 
>row can never be less than the height of the second row of the table. You 
>can actually expand the second row of the table, the one after the page 
>break, and cause the first row to jump after the break.
>
>I don't have any "keep with" or "start on" settings on any of the rows, so 
>I can't figure out what is causing this behavior. Has anyone else see 
>this, is it a known bug? Is there a workaround?
>
>Thanks,
>
>   Andy
>
>akass at jaspersoft.com
>_______________________________________________
>
>
>You are currently subscribed to Framers as lprice at txstruct.com.
>
>Send list messages to framers at lists.frameusers.com.
>
>To unsubscribe send a blank email to
>framers-unsubscribe at lists.frameusers.com
>or visit 
>http://lists.frameusers.com/mailman/options/framers/lprice%40txstruct.com
>
>Send administrative questions to listadmin at frameusers.com. Visit
>http://www.frameusers.com/ for more resources and info.


Lynne A. Price
Text Structure Consulting, Inc.
Specializing in structured FrameMaker consulting, application development, 
and training
lprice at txstruct.com            http://www.txstruct.com
voice/fax: (510) 583-1505      cell phone: (510) 421-2284